Entrepreneur’s Jason Feifer: Practical AI Strategies for Busy Business Owners

Jason Feifer (00:00)

Because if something breaks in your home, you throw it away. But if something breaks in your business, you tend to keep it. And the reason for that is because we don't often have the incentives to change. But now AI is going to break something that is already broken. It's already broken. We have it, but it doesn't work, and nobody likes it. And we just haven't had the push, the forcing function to make that change. But now we do, and somebody is going to step up and say I'm going to build a solution for now and that is a competitive advantage.

Announcer (00:34)

Welcome to THRIVE, a Paychex Business Podcast, your blueprint for navigating everything from people to policies to profits. And now, your host, Gene Marks.

Gene Marks (00:46)

Hey, everybody! It's Gene Marks, and welcome back to another episode of the Paychex THRIVE Podcast. I am really, really excited to have Jason Pfeiffer with me. Jason is the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine. He's obviously well-versed in all the things going on in the world of small business and entrepreneurism. And just as a reminder, I also write for Entrepreneur, but I write for Entrepreneur.com two, three times a month. Jason, Entrepreneur Magazine is different than Entrepreneur.com. Like, how do you guys connect to each other?

Jason Feifer (01:15)

No. Well, so first of all, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I am actually, I don't think that this was a qualification to be on the show, but I actually am a Paychex user, so that's exciting. And so, no, we, you know, it's funny. We go through all sorts of different. What do we call it? I always call the entire company Entrepreneur Magazine, even though that's not true. The company is called Entrepreneur Media, but I do that because Entrepreneur Magazine is the generally associated thing. So people call Entrepreneur.com Entrepreneur Magazine. They call Entrepreneur Magazine Entrepreneur.com. You know, it's media. It's a whole big crazy mess, but I think of it as the same thing. They're different arms of the same publication and reaching the same audience. So thank you for writing for us.

Gene Marks (01:48)

You got it, yeah, and I appreciate it. I've been doing it for years, probably 10 or 15 years now, and I'm a big fan of Entrepreneur. And you're involved with a great company, so thank you for doing what you're doing. You know, so Jason, I know you keynote. I know that you focus on small businesses and obviously entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship as well. I cover small business for The Guardian and for The Hill and for a bunch of other places numerous times a month. And I am a CPA, so we have a lot of I have a lot of small business, small mid-sized business clients all around the country, and I do a lot of consulting and speaking like you. There was a time where, like, when we were talking about issues for small businesses, it was like, oh, economic policy and regulations from Washington, and workplace things, and taxes and all. Fair enough, and obviously, all those issues are still issues. But I mean, come on, like AI and technology, AI in particular, it is just almost like jumped to the top of the list of this game-changing thing, this this hugely disruptive thing that I think both you and I know are is all ready to take you know you know impact small businesses, but it's going to have a massive impact in the years to come. So, let me start with this first question. As somebody who is, you know, eyeball deep in the world of small and mid-sized businesses and entrepreneurism, when I read all of these studies that small businesses are adopting AI, personally, I kind of raise an eyebrow because I don't see it as much yet. Starting to see a little bit more. I'm seeing them dabbling with ChatGPT or Claude, but not really relying. Anyway, you're out there. What are you seeing with right now, currently 2026, where is AI when it comes to small businesses?

Jason Feifer (03:38)

Oh boy. Well, let me start by answering that by telling you a story about a much larger business. But you know, we're actually running a essay in the next issue of the magazine by the founder of a company called Fetch, and Fetch, it's a it's a great tool to it's an e-commerce thing. And so the founder was trying to drive adoption of AI at the company, and couldn't figure out why it was moving so slowly. And started to ask employees, like, what you know, what's going on? What is the reason that you're not diving deeper into this technology, building it into your workflow, utilizing it? And the answer was, Gene, you want to guess what was the answer?

Gene Marks (04:32)

Fear.

Jason Feifer (04:33)

No.

Gene Marks (04:34)

Lack of training. No. So not working.

Jason Feifer (04:40)

Rather that they're too busy doing their jobs. That's the reason. They're just too busy doing their jobs. We got jobs. We don't time for this, right? And look, that's the same. That's the same for any technology, right? Like it's it's always it's impossible to implement any new. By the way.

Gene Marks (04:57)

I have to interrupt you. Like you know, like as as an accountant, like you know, one of the technologies I know is really good is like accounts payable automation. You know, like bill.com. and Ramp. Same thing. Whenever I ask you know people in accounting staffs and controls, like this will really save you time. This is like a really good. You should be looking at. We don't have the time to do it. We have

Jason Feifer (05:13)

the time to do it. Yeah. Totally. Don't have the time. And the same is true for AI. I mean, look, my my my feeling on AI is that AI is normal technology. It is largely going to operate by the rules of normal technology. It is not like a weird alien force that's come down and is going to absolutely change everything about our lives. So you know, this is this is the same for any normal technology. Adoption is challenging because people are busy. I mean, it's just as simple as that. So that is, I think, especially true in small and medium-sized businesses where you have the you have the person who's running it is doing 7 million different things. I mean, if you're talking about a small business, then your founder is still your head of sales. I mean, like, who's who's got time to try to rethink everything about the way they do it? Just because there's new technology available, so I think that is slowing adoption. I don't know the studies in particular that you're referencing, but I would guess that a lot of them, if we're counting, utilizing AI, we're counting. I use ChatGPT to help write my emails, or or I've started to use it to help with my social media. And look, I think that's great. I don't think that you need to be reinventing the way in which you do your business just because someone is out there telling you that there's a radical new way to do things. Instead, I think that the greatest thing that anybody can do is just figure out simple, valuable adoptions for this technology and build that to your workload. It grows slowly. We don't have to have a crazy race to use it just because it's available.

Gene Marks (06:38)

So the studies, by the way, U.S. Chamber, MetLife did a study, NFID, another study. I mean, there's multiples. They're just saying, and corroborates what you what you've just been saying. You know, Deloitte at the end of last year they did like those sort of state of AI, and their prediction was was that AI is just gonna it's just gonna run in the background. You know, like you know, it's almost like you you know the example I can give is like the Rolls Royce is one of the biggest you know makers of engines in the world for airplanes, and you know they have sensors all over their engines, and they are using AI technology to like just monitor it and sense it, and right, you know what I mean? The unusual vibrate, whatever. You and I don't know. We're just in the plane. Yeah.

Jason Feifer (07:23)

Yeah. I think. Look, I think that's right. So, a couple things. Number one, I just realized that I forgot to tell you what happened with Fetch. So what he ended up doing was he gave everybody four days off. Like basically, the company shut down four days, and everyone was I guess didn't they weren't off like they weren't at home. They were off from their core jobs, and then challenged everybody kind of hackathon style to learn some AI tool and try to utilize it in the business, and maybe even develop new products as a result. It was absolutely transformative. So much innovation took place in those four days because people were liberated from the day-to-day tasks and expectations, and so they were able to focus on this new technology. So it's like if you want to solve for the problem of people being busy, well, then you need to just figure out a way for them to not be busy, so they can put their energy elsewhere. But to what you're saying, so there are there are a couple concepts that I I would like to introduce to everybody, and and as we're talking about what is AI going to be and how is it going to fit with us. So here's the first one. The first one is that I believe that AI is a microwave oven, and what I mean by that is that a microwave oven is incredible technology. I mean, Gene, try to explain a microwave oven to someone from 100 years ago, you couldn't begin.

Gene Marks (08:39)

Jason, I can't even explain it to you right now. So that's oh yeah.

Jason Feifer (08:44)

Yeah, true. It's like you know, I mean, truly, I don't know what happened to a microwave oven except I press the button and then the things. I just know that it's incredible. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's mind-blowing. Right. Don't put a spoon. Or an egg. I learned that the hard way. No way. Put an egg. Can't put an egg.

Gene Marks (09:00)

See, I'm getting value from this conversation already.

Jason Feifer (09:04)

It will explode. It will explode. So anyway, where was I? So it's AI is a microwave oven. It's incredible technology. It's in everybody's home, but here's the thing: you don't make every meal in the microwave. You don't make every meal in the microwave. You-why do we not make every meal in the microwave? The reason is because we have had decades to experiment with what belongs in the microwave. We learned that it's great at reheating pizza. It's bad at making your steak dinner, and also don't make the hard-boiled egg in the microwave, and and we don't know the answers to those things for AI. So right now we are experimenting with everything. We are functionally putting everything in the microwave, and what we're going to learn over time is that some things belong in the microwave, and some things do not belong in the microwave, and we will adjust to those things. So, so like my just because, just because, thank you. Just because somebody out there is doing something with AI doesn't mean you need to do it. Doesn't mean that it's even going to be useful. I mean, this happens all the time. I get hired by. I was hired recently by a it was a global financial services company, and they had me talk to their HR team. And so you know they asked me somebody in the Q and A session asked me if AI is going to replace HR, and I said I was like, look.

Gene Marks (10:30)

I hope so.

Jason Feifer (10:32)

You just lost every HR person in your audience.

Gene Marks (10:34)

And this is an HR company as well.

Jason Feifer (10:35)

Yeah. So you know like I am sure that there is some startup out there that has built some kind of AI tool that is designed to quote unquote replace AI. But just because somebody built that doesn't mean it's going to happen. Doesn't mean that people are even going to want it. So we are in experimentation mode, and so I would encourage everybody to to lean into. We're throwing things in the microwave. Just because you try something doesn't mean it's going to work. Just because someone else is doing something doesn't mean that you're going to have to do it. It's all just testing, and that's the moment we're in. It is a chaotic experiment.

Gene Marks (11:09)

I just love that take. And you know, the analogy I can also draw to it is just even just social media in general. I mean, you know, Twitter was founded in 2006. It's been 20 years, which sounds like a long time, but in the course of human existence, you know, when you compare it to all of the things that have been introduced in the world and the effect they've had on humans, it's massive, and and our brains can't really get our arms around, you know, get around even social media how to use it the right way, and I think you're absolutely right when it comes to AI. I mean, I mean, really, ChatGPT just came out with their their their 3.5 version in 2022. Been like four years, nothing when you look at the timetable of you know of civilization, and you're right. It's going to take some time until we figure out how this technology can actually be used in a beneficial way, and you know, and what makes sense for it. I really like that. Yeah. Having said that, because you know, we're I'm impatient. I'm I am curious. Like, are you seeing even? And I realize it's only been just a few years. Okay, but out and about, are you like, are you seeing any use cases of AI that are actually starting to make sense? When any of the people that you visit, interview, talk about, you know, they're like, "I need to use AI. Where do I even get started using AI? You know, are you seeing anything out in the world that's like, "Okay, this is like we're using AI. This seems to work. I've got a few, but go ahead. There's you.

Jason Feifer (12:30)

Yeah, and I've you know, and I've got a few too. You know, I mean, look, I think that it in a way it depends upon your needs. It depends upon where you feel least efficient. It depends upon where your greatest pain points are, and it's everything from. I mean, I was sitting next to a woman on a plane yesterday who was telling me that she just got rid of her social media manager and replaced the person with a…

Gene Marks (12:59)

Okay, I gotta stop you. So you talk to the people you sit next to on the plane. You're that guy.

Jason Feifer (13:03)

No, I'm not actually that guy. She was talking to me, and the only reason why I think this was acceptable was because I mean I was working, but I had the World Cup on the screen in front of me, and so that was a conversation starter. And she and you know so, anyway we talked for like five minutes. It was not it was not long. Don't worry, I am I'm locked in. I'm not. If you sit next to me on a plane, I am not going to talk about…

Gene Marks (13:31)

Earbuds in, eyes are on.

Jason Feifer (13:32)

The whole time, yeah. So, but she said she got rid of her social media manager. Then she also explained that the social media manager was pretty bad to begin with. And so, you know, did she get rid of a role, or did she just get rid of an underperforming employee, is you know, I think worth considering. But she said that this stuff has become really efficient and helpful, and you know, look, I think that's great. I don't worry about the loss of jobs. First of all, the social media manager was a job that didn't exist 15 years ago, anyway. But also, you know, the lump of labor policy says that the belief that there's a fixed amount of jobs to be done and a fixed amount of people to do that is is incorrect, and that everything is really flexible. So if you create, you know, if you create more labor, you create more jobs. If you know, if you create more efficiency, the work and the value shifts elsewhere. So I'm not worried about anyway. Okay, so back to that. So I find it really useful for writing. Actually, I don't write my main things with it, but I will, you know, I have to write a quote for a press release. I don't have any idea that, and so on. A headline for a story give you 20 options. That's really helpful. But look, let's step back from those kind of specific applications. And I think everyone's probably heard. And let me tell you about where I think we could start to look for the right applications for your business. So, a year, the very beginning of ChatGPT being out in market, I was out in San Francisco speaking to a law firm's attorney retreat, and so I had like hundreds of lawyers in front of me, and I gave this talk about how to adapt to change, how to thrive in times of change-that's my usual note. M. Then it was a Q and A session. All these lawyers raised their hands, and they all asked me about ChatGPT. Now that was interesting, and I answered their questions. And then I got off stage, and I went to the CEO of the law firm, and I said, "It is so interesting that all of your lawyers are focused on ChatGPT. Why is that? And he said, "Let me tell you what they were all thinking, but they didn't want to say out loud. They're all thinking is that AI is one day going to be able to either write legal motions or make it much faster than write legal motions. And lawyers work on billable hours. So if their jobs become more efficient, they're not able to bill as many hours. That's the problem. That's what they're worried about. And I said, fantastic. And and I don't mean fantastic in an anti-lawyer kind of way, but rather like who likes billed hours, right? Like who likes billed hours? I mean, Gene, you surely had to hire lawyers. Did you like paying them by the 15 minutes?

Gene Marks (16:09)

Of course not. You want a deliverable? You want to pay a fee for a product, basically. That's right.

Jason Feifer (16:15)

That's exactly right. And and and it is like insulting to get that bill and and realize like oh my god the amount of money I paid for that person to respond to my email. It is infuriating. So why do we have it? Why do we have it? Why do we have this thing that nobody likes? And here's the answer: because if something breaks in your home, you throw it away. But if something breaks in your business, you tend to keep it. And the reason for that is because we don't often have incentives to make the change. But now, AI, in the case of, I think, billable hours, AI is going to break something that is already broken. It's already broken. We have it, but it doesn't work, and nobody likes it, and we just haven't had the push, the forcing function to make that change. But now we do, and somebody is going to step up and say, "I'm going to build a solution for now, and that is a competitive advantage. And the reason I tell you that story is that it is worth stepping back in your own business and asking, what is already broken? Like, what what what is what is what literally doesn't work? What don't I like? What don't my customers like? What don't my employees like? Because that is something that I've been protecting. Maybe because it's familiar, maybe because I haven't been forced to really engage with whether or not it's the thing that I need to be thinking about right now. But if AI can just be viewed as a forcing function to reconsider all the parts of our business and our processes, and then we can review whether or not there are better ways to do it, that I think is where we should really start. Don't start with the technology. Start with the things in your business that are broken that you have not gotten rid of.

Gene Marks (18:00)

So I'll give you my example because it speaks exactly the example you gave. And by the way, I've got like a bunch because for my firm, we do you know financial technology consultants. We're actually developing applications for people. This was a client we didn't develop an application for, but I learned from there was that the guy sells windows and doors. Okay, Jason, so he has a windows and doors company area. I think he's in Minneapolis, and he he spent 10 grand on a custom developed AI application that he put on all of his salespeople's phones when they're in the showroom. So I'm a salesperson. You come in. You're looking for windows for your house. I just turn on the app, and it's just listening to our conversation and transcribing the conversation. And then at the end of the conversation, the salespeople have been trained to like summarize it up. Like, okay, Jason, so you want this kind of window with this dimension and this folding and this whatever? Yes, it's for one to confirm. But when they finish, the app it creates a quote based on the conversation. You know. Now, meanwhile, this guy was like, my salespeople are so much more productive. All they did was complain because they had to go back and do paperwork and do the quotes, and then they would mess them up, and they were not accurate or whatever. And like this application is doing it for them. Of course, they have to approve it before it goes out to a customer. I mean, but it was just one specific example for like 10 grand. The guys had five salespeople. He's like hundreds of hours a year, you know, of them doing. I think that's the difference. Yeah, I mean, I think it's like these low-hanging fruit applications that I think businesses could be investing in that I think really provide ROI. You know what I mean?

Jason Feifer (19:30)

And my the favorite my favorite part of that story that you just told was that the salespeople were complaining. Yeah, that signal already existed, and it just wasn't being taken seriously, or it just there wasn't the belief that there was any other way to do it. And so, yeah, salespeople complain whatever these guys like, but if you just take seriously that something isn't working well enough that people are bringing it to your attention, then you've just found an incredible signal. I don't, Gene. Do you know how could you not these days? Do you know the Savannah Bananas? Well…

Gene Marks (20:06)

We just we just interviewed Jesse just a couple weeks ago. In fact, the podcast just dropped. I don't know when this podcast is dropping, but it was just the other week we just dropped it. He's amazing. They do. He's fantastic. We had a great time. He did a webinar for Paychex, which I you know moderated, and then we did a separate podcast episode.

Jason Feifer (20:24)

So oh, I love it. So, Jesse's amazing, and maybe he's maybe he said a version of this on the podcast. And if you stop it, and if not, then this is a you know bonus Savannah Bananas story. So I met Jesse because we both spoke at the same event. Savannah Bananas at this point were nobody had heard of them. They were a tiny little quirky thing in Savannah, Georgia. And now, for anyone who doesn't know, they are this probably globally famous at this point, kind of stunt baseball team that has turned into a stunt baseball league. It is, it's incredible. It's the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball. And so the way in which this came about was that Jesse bought this tiny little baseball team in Savannah, Georgia, and then nearly went bankrupt trying to run it. He tells a great story about sitting on this mattress.

Gene Marks (21:14)

He had a photo of a mattress.

Jason Feifer (21:16)

Yes, of course he has a photo. And then he asked himself, what do people hate about baseball? And he had answers. They hate the game is too slow. It's boring. Food is too expensive. And so he thought, what would it mean to stop doing what people hate? And that the answer to that question was, well, if they find it slow and boring, then why don't we make it exciting and fast? So why don't we rename the team the Savannah Bananas? Why don't we find players who do silly stunts and dances on field? What people hate that the food is too expensive? Okay, every ticket comes with all-you-can-eat food. Like it, it was simply following the signal of what people hate, and then and then and then this phrase, which he said to me, I you know I don't know eight years ago, and then I has just been stuck in my head forever. Stop doing what people hate. Stop doing what people hate. And if you want to build a great business, there's no better place to start than to look around. And I mean, you could look in a marketplace and see what people hate and build some solution for it. Or you have a business and you say, "How do we grow? Well, what do people hate? What do my sales What do my salespeople hate? What are they constantly complaining about? Oh, is there a way to fix that? Did I just make them more efficient? Yes, great. What do my customers hate? Is there a way to fix that? So this is where I think we start to find AI as not the tell-all answer, all the answers, but rather as a really valuable and interesting tool that's quite flexible and still very experimental. That's worth trying to explore. Well, what would it mean to stop doing what people hate by utilizing this new technology?

Gene Marks (22:51)

Yeah, by the way, Savannah Bananas. If a fan catches a foul ball, the batter's out. Is that the greatest rule ever?

Jason Feifer (22:56)

Oh, it's great. I love that. Right. So you know, and what happened was that he did this thing, and then games started to sell out in Savannah, and then ESPN showed up, and they did a show, and and that popped it off. And then you know, he's been great about social media, and now they're touring Major League Baseball and NFL stadiums. It's wild, but it all goes back to that question: What do people hate?

Gene Marks (23:16)

Great, that is great. I have more examples I can share with you, but obviously, that'll be for another time over beers. Let me, let me, as we're we're running low on our time here, I have other AI-related questions to ask you. I think because again, you're out there and seeing it, do you hear this every time when I talk about AI, when I know when I'm with clients, every one of my clients are worried about privacy and security about their data, and I have thoughts about this, but this is not my interview; it's your interview. What do you say? You know, when like a small business owner, remember we're all cynical, distrusting people by your nature, you know. I'm gonna upload all my data to Claude and ChatGPT, and it's gonna be my competitors. Gonna see my quotes, you know, that kind of thing. What do you say to those those business owners that that have that concern?

Jason Feifer (24:06)

All right. Well, so there are people out there who specialize in this, and that's not me, so I it probably should be your interview as much as my interview. But I look, I'll say it's interesting. I just got a demo from like what it looks like right now to solve that problem at a at a at a high level. There's this interesting company called Red Queen Logic. Familiar with Red Queen Logic? So, Red Queen Logic will, for a you know, a very sizable amount of money, but they'll they'll install what is essentially an AI server in your phone, and and it can it'll it can utilize the the you know major LLMs, but all the all the kind of data I couldn't they can explain it I can't but sort of all the data flow is contained physically in your home and none of your data ever gets fed back into the LLMs and so that that's you know that's something for ultra high-network individuals and so on and you know again…

Gene Marks (25:10)

Not to interrupt you but I mean you're you're absolutely on the right track, and there are more and more solutions coming out about this, where you're basically hosting your model, you know, in your company and your turn. And what what what is I mean, I don't know how old you are, but you remember this, but you know, there was, there used to be a client server world, you know what I mean? So you know, Jason, where everybody's running Windows, and you know they had a Windows server, and it all went to the cloud, and now I'm starting to see a trickling where because people don't just you know don't trust it where they're like you know what we we're going to buy a server again for all this and have like, right?

Jason Feifer (25:43)

Yeah. So, it's interesting. It's an interesting it's an interesting shift, and there's going to be all sorts of solutions for this. Me personally, I will just-I cannot advise what other people do for their privacy. But me personally, I-I just-I'm not hesitating, and the reason I'm not hesitating is because I-I haven't yet seen really core examples of some kind of specific proprietary data just getting delivered to somebody else as a state secret. I understand that everything that we're doing is informing the models, but like also consider that your information is the size of a grain of sand on the Earth, the Earth's worth of information inside of these things. So, like I don't know, it doesn't concern me. But I also, you know, I like when I walk into the airport and I stand at Clear and it scans my face and it lets me in. Like, you know, I've given up some degree of privacy for that to happen, but it makes it more efficient. So, you know, like I understand the need, and I think that if you want to invest in privacy, you should. And there are interesting solutions out there, but I don't want to give…Nobody sue me, this isn't legal advice, but it sounds it's just well.

Gene Marks (27:01)

You know you you kind of hit on the head with your clear example of obviously the security you know TSA is the same thing as snap of picture to go through, and everything in life is risk reward, right? I mean, no, we, you know, you can get hit by a bus while you're crossing the street. You know, I mean, you know, AI comes with a risk, but I know a lot of business people are willing to assume that risk because the rewards, return on investment, hard cede to the risk. That's good. Okay, we've talked about AI the entire time. It's been great, and you've given us great insights and great advice. Just in the last two minutes that we had, you're in the entrepreneur world. You're editor-in-chief for Entrepreneur Magazine. You're you know you know see everything that's out there, and the startups are out there, whatever. So Jason, if I if I you know here's a curveball for you. I gave you 10 million bucks. You could start up your own business. Knowing what you know in 2026, what would be that business?

Jason Feifer (27:54)

Oh my god. Oh my god. Okay, so I would. Can I just put it all in the SpaceX IPO?

Gene Marks (28:06)

No, you’re not investing in someone else.

Jason Feifer (28:10)

No, I can’t do that? Yeah. All right. Look, I my I I what I'm obsessed with in business is cycles. So what I what I I love watching for patterns of bundling and unbundling, rebundling. I think that everything in business is basically constantly rebundling or unbundling itself, and and so I'm really intrigued by thought patterns that are about because this new technology exists, this completely different other thing is going to be happening. I find that to be fascinating. Just earlier today, for example, I was on a different podcast and we were talking about the media and the host made this really interesting point to me, which was he said, you know, AI has made me incredibly distrustful of what I see on social media, and social media had been drawing so much business and authority away from traditional media because you know for all sorts of obvious reasons. So people have sort of shifted from traditional media to call it social media. But if social media becomes distrustful because of AI, do people actually shift back to the trust?

Gene Marks (29:28)

They will. I think fakes are a really good thing for traditional media like Entrepreneur Magazine. I mean, you see something crazy on TikTok. What are you going to do? Like, you know, how are you going to verify that you're going to go to the New York Times or Wall Street Journal or the AP News? You know, like did this actually happen? Right?

Jason Feifer (29:44)

Yeah, it's really interesting. So, I also start to think I start to think about how, in an increasingly digitized world, we are going to start to prioritize more in-person experiences and more things that actually do involve a trusted human in the beginning. I'm obsessed with this conversation I had a million years ago with the founder of Redfin. Redfin is basically it was a website that was originally designed to remove the realtor from the home buying and selling transaction. His philosophy was: we have the technology, you don't need the realtor. Everyone says the realtor is is a waste of money. So why don't we just get rid of them? People buy and sell houses directly on. Turns out you need the realtor. Turns out they it's you don't actually need the realtor they want the realtor they want the realtor because as it turns out people want a trusted human being in the middle of the largest transaction in their life and so the way in which Redfin grew was that they hired a ton of realtors even though that was originally the plan was to get rid of them so I think that there's going to be a lot of that happening in this AI shift right now, and so while everyone is throwing their money, and boy, is everybody just go check out what Andreessen Horowitz or whatever is investing in. It's like just throwing their money at AI. If I had $10 million, I would not do that. I would instead start to think, what is the great opportunity in reaction to AI, and let the investment there.

Gene Marks (31:09)

It's a great answer. Yeah, I'd be buying, I'd be buying up a lot of plumbing firms, electricians, you know, people in the construction industry. You know what I mean? Like you work with your... There's a great graphic that Anthropic put out that showed you know the occupations that will be impacted by AI and all the occupations that wouldn't be impacted by it, or not as much. And it is, yeah, basically everybody gets to work with their hands. That's where it's at. Jason, this great conversation. I really appreciate you spending the time. Thank you. I want to wish you the best of success at Entrepreneur Magazine with your speaking as well with your other businesses. you're super interesting, guy. You're doing a great job, an entrepreneur as a contributor. I really appreciate you. So thank you.

Jason Feifer (31:51)

Oh hey, thanks a lot. I appreciate it. You know, everyone, please get in touch with me however you can. I'm on Instagram. I'm on LinkedIn. I love to hear from people, and you know, I've got a newsletter which is called One Thing Better. We should, I'll give you the link, please include it in show notes or whatever it is. Each week, I send out a, it's I call it One Thing Better, which is one way to be more successful and satisfied and build a career and company you love. So it's a lot of the kind of stuff that we're talking about today that's really helpful. And so Gene and Paychex, thanks for having me.

Gene Marks (32:19)

Yeah, thank you so much. Everybody, I've been talking with Jason Feifer, is the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine. Thank you so much for watching or listening. You've been watching or listening to Paychex THRIVE Podcast. Please subscribe to our podcast on your favorite podcast platform or on YouTube as well. If you need any advice or tips or help in running your business, sign up for our Paychex Thrive newsletter. Just go to paychex.com/Thrive. Again, my name is Gene Marks. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you again soon with another episode. Take care. Do you have a topic or a guest that you would like to hear on THRIVE? Please let us know. Visit payx.me/ThriveTopics and send us your ideas or matters of interest. Also, if your business is looking to simplify your HR, payroll, benefits, or insurance services, see how Paychex can help. Visit the resource hub at paychex.com/WORX. That's W-O-R-X. Paychex can help manage those complexities while you focus on all the ways you want your business to thrive. I'm your host Gene Marks and thanks for joining us. Till next time, take care.

Announcer (33:23)

This podcast is property of Paychex, Inc. 2026. All rights reserved.